But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them,
God had given a real answer to Solomon's prayer, and tokens of his acceptance of it, immediately, by the fire from heaven which consumed the sacrifices (as we find Ch2 7:1); but here we have a more express and distinct answer to it. Observe, I. In what way God gave him this answer.
Commenting on 1 Kings 9:1-9
But if you shall at all turn from following me, you or your children,.... From my worship, as the Targum; either Solomon or his successors, or the people of Israel and their posterity; should they turn their backs on God and his worship, meaning not in a single instance, or in some small degree; but as in the original, "if in turning ye turn" (e)...
[But] if ye shall at all turn from following me, ye or your children, and will not keep my commandments [and] my statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods, and worship them: (b) God declares that disobedience against him, is the cause of his displeasure, and so of all misery.